darmerie ordered that instead of yellow patches the Jews were to wear white armbands with a yellow Star of David.
The new gendarmes who replaced those who had left treated both the Polish and Jewish population more decently. They seized Jews for work only when there was actually something to do, such as repairing a bridge, spreading gravel on the road, doing some craftsman’s work at the gendarmerie post, paving a stretch of street, etc. They did not beat people, carried out no house searches, and did not rob. It should also be mentioned that from the very beginning the whole service staff at the gendarmerie post consisted of Jews (female cooks, cleaning maids, people looking after the horses, water carri-ers, etc.) and they were not badly treated.
At the beginning of August, rumours spread in Rutki that SS men had come to the small town of Szumowo in the county of Łomża, herded all the Jews into the marketplace, selected a few dozen necessary craftsmen to stay behind, and taken all the rest away in trucks in an unknown direction. The peasants from the surrounding area said the Jews had been taken to the trenches dug by the Soviet military on the former border near the village of Proszenica,321 and had all been murdered there. The news caused panic, but in fact no one really believed it. A week or so later, news arrived that the [4] following day the entire Jewish population of Zambrów322 had been ordered to assemble in the marketplace. The whole Jewish population numbering several thousand had assembled in the marketplace; the SS hadcome, selected around 900 adults and taken them away in an unknown direction. The peasants again reported that they had been taken to Proszenica and murdered, but the Jews didn’t believe it. To clarify the situation, a delegation from the Rutki Judenrat went to see the head of the gendarmerie post, who
